Tuesday, January 06, 2015

BPI, the master rating designed by ESPN's Dean Oliver to measure how good a team is when all key players are healthy, indicates Marquette is the 55th best team in the country with a 75.03 rating since Luke Fischer arrived. In games prior to Fischer's eligibility the team averaged a 64.24 - making them the 100th best team in the country.

ESPN's promotion of the system could be helpful in Marquette getting a bid if they play well enough to get on the bubble. Marquette's rating is 68.9 right now - good for just 76th place - but MU stands to get a nice jump after two more games.

In studying the system, it gives greater weight to games in which both teams have all five of their leading players suited up. The quirk is the system only "sees" a key player as one of the top five in minutes per game OF THOSE WHO HAVE PLAYED IN AT LEAST HALF of the games.

Fischer has only been eligible for 6 of 14 games so right now MU gets no extra credit for having played a lot better with him on the court. After next week's Creighton game - making it 8 of 16 games. At that point the system basically recalculates those six games, the Georgetown and Creighton results and all future games moving forward as the "true" Marquette team and the pre-Fischer squad as weighted less.